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Richard De Prospo

Faculty
English Dept
  • Director of American Studies; Ernest A. Howard Professor of English and American Studies

Richard De Prospo

Since the publication of Theism in the Discourse of Jonathan Edwards in 1985, Rich De Prospo has been working to revise American literary history鈥攁 task that is usually done from the margins of ethnic, women鈥檚, or queer studies鈥攆rom the inside out, so to speak, by supposing that early American literature can be (re)read as neocolonial, as differing fundamentally from the modern American literature that it is almost universally accepted as founding, and thus as subverting claims made by generations of scholars that American literature is continuous and unified.
 

The Latest Early American Literature uncovers the misreadings of early American literature that can result from the virtually unanimous acceptance of early American literature as modern American literature鈥檚 immature predecessor, and the forthcoming Poe鈥檚 Difference supposes that both Poe, and the popular print culture of the U.S. 1830s and 40s in which Poe tried so hard to curry favor, remain belatedly attached to a European parent culture鈥攊ndeed, to a European culture that had been left behind in Europe by the middle of the nineteenth century鈥�, a backwardness commonly accepted as a central feature of postcolonial cultures worldwide, but which has been repressed by the Americanist orientation of even the most politically liberal and curricularly expansive of contemporary American literary historians.

De Prospo has been a college and university professor for more than forty years. He is widely published in scholarly journals of early and nineteenth-century American literature, and of literary theory. He has also published on literary Abolitionism in the U.S. and on African-American literature, and has coedited and written the 鈥淎fterword鈥� for The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom鈥檚 Cabin.

Education
  • B.A., Yale University, 1971
  • M.A., University of Virginia, 1972
  • Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1977

Teaching Areas

  • American Literature
  • American Studies
  • Popular Culture

  • Literary Theory

Selected Published Works

Books

  • Poe鈥檚 Difference, 2019
  • The Latest Early American Literature, 2016
  • The Stowe Debate, Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom鈥檚 Cabin, with Mason Lowance and Ellen Westbrook, 1994

  • Theism in the Discourse of Jonathan Edwards, 1985

Articles

  • 鈥淢ichael Colacurcio鈥檚 (Un) Godly Letters.鈥� A Passion for Getting it Right: Essays in Honor of Michael Colacurcio鈥檚 50 Years of Teaching, 2016
  • 鈥淲hose/Who鈥檚 Ligeia.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;Poe Studies, 2012.
  • 鈥淏efore/Beyond Multiculturalism; the 鈥榣ess common idiom鈥� of P猫re Isaac Jogues鈥檚 Novum Belgium.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;When the French Were Here.  Proceedings of the Samuel De Champlain Quadricentennial Symposium, 2010.
  • 鈥淒esigning the Early American Literature Component of the Undergraduate American Literature Survey Course.鈥�&苍产蝉辫; The CEA Forum, 2010.
  • 鈥淩efreuding Lacan.鈥� Poe Studies, 2004.
  • 鈥淐ontemptus Mundi in the New World.鈥� Studies in Medievalism, 1993.
  • 鈥淗umanizing the Monster: Integral Self versus Bodied Soul in the Personal Writings of Franklin and Edwards.鈥� The Historical Legacies of Johnathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, 1993.
  • 鈥淢arginalizing Early American Literature.鈥� New Literary History, 1992.
  • 鈥淛onathan Edwards鈥檚 Ethics?鈥� Modern Philology, 1991.

Honors

  • Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh (1993)
  • Dupont Fellowship, University of Virginia (1972)